Coronavirus: The four stages of a global pandemic

ET Online|

30 Mar 2020, 11:45 AM IST

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Pandemic

Over the past few months, the world has been hit by a large scale viral outbreak - coronavirus - that causes covid-19. India has already reported over 950 cases of the virus, and as cases look like rising further, here are the stages of a pandemic and what they entail.

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Stage 1

In the first stage of a pandemic, the disease doesn’t spread locally - cases reported are usually people who have had travel history to an already affected country.

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Stage 2

This is the stage of local transmission - when people who have brought the virus into the country transmit it to people they come in contact with, usually friends and family. At this stage, it is easy to trace spread and quarantine people.

Agencies

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Stage 3

The third stage is when the source of the infection is untraceable; this stage is identified by people who haven’t had travel history getting affected by the virus - once here spread is extremely contagious and difficult to control.

AFP

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Stage 4

So far, China has been the only country to experience Stage 4, where spread is practically uncontrollable and there are many major clusters of infection all over the country.